


Just Another Body to Burn

by shippingmyarmada



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, No one important dies!, Probably Horribly Inaccurate Depictions of Courtroom Proceedings, Slow Burn, not anyone that we like, really slow burn, you will probably be happy with the death!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-08-08 11:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16428338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shippingmyarmada/pseuds/shippingmyarmada
Summary: She told him the whole story, once his brain resumed functioning and he’d led her to the kitchen with his mother’s couch throw wrapped around her shoulders.“I got home late,” she said, fingers still jittery as they wrapped around a steaming mug of hot chocolate Steve made from a pack of powder that expired a year ago, “Neil was already mad. I knew he- Iknewheyelledat Billy but I didn’t know he.” She cut herself off short with a deep breath and a long sip. “I didn’t know."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't seen any other fics with this kind of premise and tbh I really needed it in my life so here we go.

The night Maxine showed up on his doorstep had been the first real day of spring, with whistling wind and slushy grey snow, warm enough that no one bothered to wear jackets to school. Steve had slept through his English class, pointedly avoided Nancy and Jonathan in the halls, smoked two cigarettes for lunch, and come home to a goodbye note on the kitchen counter on a pizza box. It was _normal._

The summer was on the tip of his tongue, creeping up his fingers and reminding him that he was still alive. The school had been lost the chaos of the first day of spring, like it was every year. Anxious foot tapping and loud smiles and a louder Tommy Hill yelling of parties and the approaching end of school. They still had months left, but that didn’t matter. Not when the sun was showing itself and warming too-pale skin and giving Steve a real reason to wear his shades all the time again. The students were vibrating out of their skin, humming and buzzing and even the teachers didn’t care enough to corral them. 

Steve had flown home, windows of the Beemer down as cold air washed over his sun-warmed skin. The sun danced above him and for the first time in a very, very long time, he’d believed that maybe things were turning around. That the world hadn’t really ended that fall, and that maybe, just maybe, he was alive and okay.

Basketball was long over, Steve’s gym shorts forgotten and abandoned in his locker, and with them, any semblance of Billy Hargrove in his life. The only reminder of that fall was Max, who’d slipped into the group for good, stuck by trauma just as much as Steve was. She’d managed to weasel her way into his car more and more often, accompanying Dustin and usually Lucas, when he carted them to the arcade. Truth be told, the red-headed spitfire wasn’t as annoying as she could’ve been, and she was probably second on Steve subconscious list of favorite kids. After Dustin, of course. 

Her hair was wild, tangled and windswept and slashed red across her still tan face. A bike fell abandoned in the driveway, a soldier Steve wasn’t even sure was hers. Tear tracks littered her face, damp and nearly frozen in the chill of the night. They skated over a blossoming bruise on her cheek, slightly obscured by messy strands of hair. There was a tiny cut on her cheekbone, tacky blood smeared in with the tears. 

The light above Steve’s door cast everything thing in dull yellow, muting the storm in Max’s blue eyes. It dulled her skin and cast long shadows over her shivering frame, clad only in a tee shirt. Her jacket long forgotten and seemingly unmissed despite the goosebumps on her arms. 

Steve just looked at her, taking everything in, too surprised by her sudden, lonesome appearance to say anything. He knew he had that deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, the one that always seemed to creep up around those kids, but he almost couldn’t be bothered.

“I didn’t know where else to go, I couldn’t-I couldn’t go to the party,” she started, a shaking hand swiping her nose, “Billy,” she trailed off, gulping in air to steady her voice, “I think Billy shot his dad.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Steve asked, unable to form anything else as he seemingly short circuited. He ushered her in, unconvinced, but the state of her enough to make him believe _something_ happened.

She told him the whole story, once his brain resumed functioning and he’d led her to the kitchen with his mother’s couch throw wrapped around her shoulders. 

“I got home late,” she said, fingers still jittery as they wrapped around a steaming mug of hot chocolate Steve made from a pack of powder that expired a year ago, “Neil was already mad. I knew he- I _knew_ he _yelled_ at Billy but I didn’t know he.” She cut herself off short with a deep breath and a long sip. “I didn’t know. He was yelling at Billy about me. And I told him I didn’t need a damn babysitter, and that he wasn’t even my dad so he couldn’t make me do anything. And Billy told me to shut the fuck up and go to my room, but I didn’t. Then he slapped me. Neil, I mean. He told me that he knew I was a slut because the party is all boys. He was going to say more, but Billy got real mad. Told him to _leave her out of it, this was between the two of them._ I didn’t know what he meant. I think I do now. I think it’s been like this for a long time, Steve. A long time.” 

She told him about Neil, with his hand around Billy’s throat and danger in his eyes when she’d screamed _You’re killing him,_ as she’d ripped at his sleeve in the living room. About the backhand she’d received for it, about the alcohol she could smell on Neil’s breath when he turned on her for the first time. About the angry marks she could see on Billy’s throat when he’d thrown a punch at his own father. About how she hadn’t even known Neil owned a gun, or where it had even been, when the struggle for it began. About the taunts that fell from Neil’s mouth when Billy’d gotten the gun fixed on him, daring Billy to do it at the same time as he told him he knew he was too pussy to. About the terrifying wildness in Billy as he shouted _Get the fuck out of here, Maxine, fucking run._ About the fear.

About the gunshot that rang out as she peddled down Cherry Lane on Billy’s bike, echoing in her ears as it deafened them. 

Summer had abandoned Hawkins the second Maxine stepped through his door. Any semblance of peace in a small town had disappeared, gone up in wisps of smoke the second Billy pulled the trigger. The facade pasted up by Hopper cracked and crumbled down easier than ever before.

Joyce appeared in a squeal of tires and frantic fists against his front door. He’d called her, the only person he could think of who knew what to do when shit really hit the fan, as Max had washed her face of the remnants of her journey. He’d said, muffled through the phone, _Ms. Byers, something’s happened. Max is here. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. She needs someone who isn’t me. I didn’t know who else to call._

“Hopper called about a domestic at the Hargrove’s,” she whispered in his ear the second Steve opened the door, Will behind her but hanging back, “What did she see?”

In truth, Steve hadn’t even thought about the fact that Hopper would’ve been called, that anyone would’ve been called. He didn’t get the chance to answer, though, as Max caught sight of the Byers with the mug still in her hands.

“You weren’t supposed to call _them,_ ” she said, the danger in her her voice drowned out by shaking betrayal. “That’s why I came here, you asshole.”

When the mug shattered on the floor, it was like she hadn’t even realized it was in her hands until it wasn’t. She spun on her heel, unfazed by the scalding drink soaking her socked feet, and fled to the bathroom. 

From just over the threshold, Will supplied, “Her mom’s visiting her sister. It was just her and them this week.”

How he got into messes like these all the time, Steve wasn’t sure. But it always went back to those damn kids and Billy Fucking Hargrove, really, or Nancy. 

“She thinks that uh. Billy shot his dad? He didn’t, did he? He’s an asshole, but like, he wouldn’t. Right?” Steve asked, lost in a group of people he had no relation to outside shared trauma and Dustin Henderson.

Joyce looked at him with a sadness in her eyes that Steve couldn’t understand. Like he was an idiot, almost, and was too stupid to even realize it. There was no trace of malice on her tired face, just a profound sadness. “I don’t know, Steve. Hop’s coming over as soon as he’s done there. He’ll tell us what happened.”

She must’ve seen his loss on his face, his lack of any idea of what he was supposed to do in a situation like this. There had been no good reason for Max to show up at his house, when a much more suitable parent was right there in front of him. When the only reason she showed up was because his parents weren’t home all that often, he’d protestingly helped out that fall, and Billy had told her to _run._ Joyce’s soft fingers grazed his forearm, jolting him from his haze of thoughts. 

“She trusts you, honey, that’s why she came here. You should go talk to her. She doesn’t have anyone else right now. I’ll make everyone something to eat while we wait for Hopper,” Joyce said it all with a warm hand on his shoulder and a melancholic smile on her lips. 

Steve’s knuckles stung where he rapped them against the hardwood of the bathroom door. “Hey, uh, Max? Wanna let me in?” He asked, rolling his eyes at himself for being so damn clueless all the time.

“No,” she responded firmly, pulling open the door an inch anyway.

There was a fresh redness to her eyes, her small mouth set in a hard line, making it nearly impossible for Steve to tell if she had been crying from sadness or anger. He assumed the latter. As he entered the small bathroom, he closed the door behind him. Awarding her at least that small privacy.

Max sat on the closed lid of the toilet, scrubbing hard at her damp eyes as Steve joined her on the edge of the tub. Far enough away to give her somewhat of a personal bubble, close enough for- something. Something that he didn’t even know what he was expecting. To be there if she needed him? He didn’t _do_ stuff like this. Like anything real, anything other than easy high school problems and comforting Dustin sometimes and dealing with absent parents and saving the world while hyped up of adrenaline. He didn’t do deep feelings and thinking without the sharp taste of adrenaline behind his teeth, the didn’t do real life problems with real life monsters. 

And he was nearly out of expired hot chocolate packets. 

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here, Random Girl,” he said, and laughed when she did first, “I had to call her. I’m like the worst person you could’ve chosen, you know.”

She chuckled again, wet and gross, then replied, “Ever think that was the point, pretty boy?”

“You hear him call me that or are you just as much of a dick?” And he’d have liked to put his own fist in his mouth, because that was just a _stupid,_ insensitive thing to say. But Max laughed again, shiney blue eyes slightly softer.

She hit him on the knee, light enough to show she was joking, “Both, I think. He called you that a lot.”

“I barely talked to him.”

“Maybe not to your face, then.” That time when she laughed, her bottom lip quivered just enough for Steve to notice. 

He really wasn’t good at shit like this. 

“Hey, kid, it’s gonna be ok. We saved the world, remember? Means it’s not gonna end like this.” It was a pretty good mini-speech, if he did say so himself. 

“You’re an idiot, Steve.”

“Hey, hey, hey, I let you take over _my_ house at eight o’clock in the evening and you treat me like this?”

“Like you had anything better to do.”

“Shut up.”

When her eyes finally seemed clear and they still hadn’t addressed the reason she fled the second she’d seen Joyce and Will, Steve added, “Joyce is making dinner, or something.”

“ _Fine,_ Steve, I’ll get out of your damn bathroom.” She laughed again, tiny and hidden and like she was trying to convince herself to do it. But she emerged from hiding anyway, so Steve had succeeded. 

The kitchen was deadly silent, only the gentle clatter of crusts from the grilled cheeses that Joyce had made with bread Steve hadn’t even known he’d had. Max drank more hot chocolate, the sandwich sitting dull as she pushed it around with a distasteful finger. Steve couldn’t stand the suffocating silence, heavy and thick around the usually unused table. Time passed like thick, awkward molasses, and for once, Steve wished Dustin was there to make him feel stupid and make horrible jokes. 

 

Hopper stood where Max had, just hours before, with something else drenching him like sickly rain. His shoulders hung low, defeated in a way no one had seen since the gate had been closed. Even Steve, and his lacking perceptiveness, could read through those lines. He didn’t have to ask to know that only one person left that house alive. That there had been a loser, and Steve couldn’t find it in himself nor in the cool, bustling wind of the first day of spring, to pity the loss. 

The chief shook his head lightly, then stepped into a house already full to the bursting. Steve couldn’t remember the last time there’d been so many people in his house without him being drunk. 

The night wind, whistling through the trees as the clock neared midnight, beckoned to Steve. Whispered its secrets as it hit his face, asking him to join it instead of the mess that had become his unwilling home. He shut the door instead.

By the time Steve made it back to the living room, Hopper was already surrounded. 

“He said, uh,” Hopper glanced around the room, crossed arms unfolding and refolding as he focused on Joyce, “He said Neil went after Maxine. That they were in danger. It was self defense.”

“Is he dead?” Max’s voice was small but strong. Like the rest of her, Steve thought. Small but strong and annoyingly stubborn and determined. Not as hot-headed as her brother but hot on his heels in that respect. 

Hopper’s eyes darted between her and Joyce, the unease written clearly on his heavy brow. Steve swore he watched Joyce give him a tiny nod of approval, but he couldn’t actually be sure. “Yeah, kid, he bled out in the ambulance. I’m sorry.”

Max didn’t skip a beat in her response, faint eyebrows furrowed as she said, “I’ll testify, or whatever. It was self defense.” 

_Maxine Mayfield was an enigma,_ Steve thought as she stood taller than Hopper in presence alone. She hated Billy, everything about him and everything he did, and everyone around her for more than a few minutes knew it. Her contempt, distrust, and anger never far from her sharp tongue. But there she was, all five feet of her, set in stone and defending the guy she never stopped talking shit about. 

Steve knew, in the back of his mind, that their relationship was getting better since the fall. From snippets of Dustin’s long speeches that he only ever half listened to, to the sight of a blue Camaro outside the arcade with smoke trickling from the driver’s window. He’d known there was shit between the siblings that the rest of them wouldn’t ever get close to understanding; when Billy had shown up early to the Byers’ dinner party on night with blood staining his teeth and a heavy red bruise forming on his neck, and Max had protested loudly and bitched but gone with him immediately and without real question. He’d known, really, that there had always been something wrong with the blond boy with a rotation of mottled bruises on display in the locker room showers. He just hadn’t cared nearly enough to pay attention. To any of it, really.

The whole thing was flying over Steve’s head as he got stuck on one harsh fact. Billy Hargrove, the guy who called him _pretty boy_ and drank too much at parties and had a notorious sex drive and was almost as much of a heartbreaker as Steve had been in his other life, _killed_ his father. Even more sticky, was the idea that every bruise on the body he caught glimpses of had been caused by that father. By someone’s own _dad._

Steve’s stomach rolled uncomfortably with the thought, far worse than when Max had first suggested that Billy’d killed someone. 

The world was underwater, or at least it sounded like it. His mind swam in the thick of it, a starck difference to the fall where all he could hear through the rumble of obnoxious kids’ voices was a sharp ringing, his own blood pumping fast through his ears. 

He missed something, as the water drained and he could focus again, because Max’s eyebrows were furrowed even farther and Hopper looked like he was about to grab his mother’s expensive vase from the end table and throw it. Steve _almost_ hoped he would.

“ _When_ is he coming home, Hopper?” Max glared, the tears from the earlier part of the night merely a distant memory. Replaced with that same troublesome stubbornness from last fall. Steve wasn’t sure if the house you killed your father in after years of being beaten really counted as _home_ but that was neither here nor there. He was more weirded out by how much Max was still fighting for her hated brother. 

“He’s spending the night in county jail,” Hopper answered, “We meet with the judge in the morning to see if the prosecutors pressing charges. He’s still a minor, so chances are he’s going to be released. Especially if he tells his side of the...story.”

“When am I going to testify?”

“You can give a victim’s statement tomorrow, if you really want. You’ll be under oath, kid, you can’t, _embellish_ what happened.” 

“I know what ‘under oath’ means, asshole.”

Hopper just pinched his nose, and muttered something incomprehensible.

Max didn’t cry for Neil, like Steve had expected. She didn’t cry at all after Hopper got there, just took her thrice refilled second mug to Steve’s barely used couch with Will. Will, who draped another blanket over her shoulders and patted them when he was finished, but didn’t speak. Didn’t need to, to show what he was thinking. Will, who had been through his own hell and come back almost unscathed, who knew better than anyone else what it was like for the world to crumble around you and leave you in a dimension unrecognizable. 

The whole moody, depressed silence thing was driving Steve mad. He was used to quiet in that house. To listening to the hum of the refrigerator, to the buzz of the hall light, to the occasional grunt of a settling house. But that was only when he was alone. He couldn’t fathom the silence in a full house.

His parents never bothered to be quiet when they were home. They announced their presence like Steve would forget if they left themselves room to breathe, to think. His mother had her radio, constantly playing old music as she danced around the house in different states of disarray. She talked to herself, or to Steve anytime he was within ear shot, about everything from new curtains to how the cleaner had done a bad job that week. His father stomped around the house with a military purpose, snide comments hiding not-so-humble brags to anyone who could hear him. 

Behind the nearly closed door of the kitchen, Hopper and Joyce spoke in hushed whispers. Steve knew the exact floorboard to stand on, just outside, and how to crane his neck to hear what was being said without being noticed. In all his years in that too-big house, he’d gotten accustomed to having to hide, just out of the tiny radius of his parent’s attention to find out what was really happening. In that spot, ten years before, he’d found out his pet cat hadn’t run away but instead bee put down the week prior. Seven years before, he’d found out about his father’s affair with his assistant. Two years later, of his mother’s with the pool boy he’d always really liked but had stopped coming over for the monthly cleaning suddenly. He’d learned of their impending divorce in that spot, just the previous summer. 

In Steve’s eighteen years on this planet, he’d learned there was only one real way to find out what people were thinking. To listen when they thought no one would hear it. With Nancy that had happened to be when she was too drunk to close her mouth, with his parents it was behind the kitchen door.

Through the sliver of light pouring from the kitchen, Steve could only make out Joyce’s work-toughened hand clinging to Hopper’s uniformed forearm as she spoke. “How long, Hop? How long was a boy being beaten in this town without anyone noticing?” Her voice shook minutely as she said it, for the first time in the night allowing herself to be something other than the strong mother archetype she was so used to playing. 

Steve had heard the rumors, of course, of Lonnie Byers and his penchant for whiskey and hurting his wife. Of his inevitable banishment from Hawkins.

“Longer than Hawkins. I don’t know, but I don’t think he’s known any different,” Hopper replied softly, “Max didn’t know.”

“He’s staying with me and my boys when he gets out of holding. Tell that to the judge. He’s staying with me.” 

In the short time Steve had known Joyce Byers, she’d proven herself to be made of something different from the rest of the town. She was harsh edges softened by years of a hard life. She was fierce and protective, willing to give everything for her sons. She was everything a mother was supposed to be, and everything in a mother that Steve hadn’t even known he hadn’t had. Through it all, she was kind and loving, too.

She’d invited Steve over for dinner more times than he’d cared to count. He’d stiffly attended a few times, always worn down by the insistent, annoying begging of a certain curly haired middle schooler. Through his intense discomfort at simply existing in the same room as the proof of Nancy’s betrayal, Joyce had never failed to treat him as a member of the _party._

“He’s dangerous, Joyce,” Steve could hear the nose bridge pinch in Hopper’s voice, “He’s not like Jonathan and Will,” Steve watched as Joyce stepped away from him, loud footsteps echoing on the tile, “He killed someone.”

“You don’t get to dictate how Billy gets out of his victimhood, Jim Hopper. I would’ve killed Lonnie if he hadn’t left on his own. I would’ve killed him if he went after my boys. Would you have called me dangerous? Or would you have called me a battered woman at the end of her rope?” Her voice was hard and angry, sharp and determined. She knew she was right, Steve could tell, especially with the low sigh that escaped Hopper as she spoke, “Besides, I’ve dealt with a lot more dangerous than a teenage boy. We all have.”

Hopper huffed again, “Fine. I’ll tell the judge.”

Steve hadn’t ever thought of it that way, before that night. That the things Billy had done, could’ve been done for a reason outside of pure hate. That a boy like Billy Hargrove,built like a brick house and filled with fire and flying fists, could be a _victim._

“Where are your parents, Steve?” Joyce asked before she left, “Do you want to come too? This house is lonely. We have the room.”

Steve had thanked her-politely, like any good little rich boy was taught-as he refused, dreading the idea of being in that haunted house more than he had to be. Afraid, not that he’d admit it, of the walls that once held a map of a nightmare, of the hall that he’d nearly burnt a monster in. Afraid of what he would awaken with his screams when the terror broke free of the inevitable nightmares that house would cause. 

He fell asleep early in the morning, long after everyone else had been carted back to the Byers’, with terrified blue eyes and a shaking gun painted on the backs of his eyelids.


	2. Chapter 2

The pair of them looked like a right horror show, pulled from the ashes of last fall. They looked of movies released on Halloween night, of broken wings and battered limbs, of the PSAs Hawkins’ Middle always showed at assemblies, of dead blue eyes and betrayal, of everything wrong with Hawkins, Indiana. Max’s bruised face shone in the harsh fluorescent light of the courtroom, more purple than the night before with the same kind of rainbow band-aid that had graced Steve’s jaw in the fall plastered onto her cheek. She’d only put it on, Max told Steve before they’d gone in with Joyce, to make it look as bad as possible. It wasn’t a _lie,_ she’d insisted. It was showing what it _could_ have been, _would_ have been had Billy not been there.

Billy, on the other hand, sat beside his city-appointed defense lawyer and the woman Steve guessed was a social worker of some sort, with his shoulders drawn in. The sickly purple blossoms flowered above the neck of his shirt, vibrant against the deep navy of it. His hair hung limp, lacking its usual perfected bounce. He was a disaster in human skin. The part that haunted Steve the most though, were those dulled blue eyes and their lack of remorse, of _anything_ behind their red rims. 

Billy hadn’t seen Steve, stuck in a corner behind the defense’s table, when he’d walked in. His usual attire had been shed, likely forced, and instead he wore a tee shirt too big for him and much baggier jeans than he’d ever be seen in in the real world. His dangling earring was also removed, no longer glinting from behind bouncing curls. 

It occurred to Steve, only when Billy’s back was to him and the blocky name splayed across the back of the shirt was in his view, that the clothes were Hopper’s. That Hopper had put that _dangerous_ kid in his own clothes instead of the orange jumpsuit standard to give him a better shot at getting out. Even Hopper himself didn’t believe that what Billy had done was undeserved. 

He wondered what the real outcome would be. In his eighteen years, the only monsters he’d come to face were those of mythic proportions. Those that could be killed without repercussion. Those that were not _real._ That didn’t exist in a court where lives could be ruined, had been ruined, could be changed by the so-called justice system. Steve had been brought up to believe in his country and the system, but witnessing a battered pair of recently freed hostages made him unsure who the real monsters were in the world. 

Was it someone he hated, deep in the pit of his stomach for beating the shit out of him and tormenting his group of kids? Was it the man who’d made him that way, who’d pushed a teenager to the brink of humanity and perished because of it? Was it a judge who could sit in a booth and go home and sleep with ease because a wild girl hadn’t shown up on his doorstep crying the night before? Was it any of them, really? 

Steve wasn’t sure when the world had turned grey, but he was pretty sure it involved a spitfire of a girl and the way she brought humanity to someone Steve hadn’t cared to think of that way before.

He really hated how easy it was to get involved in this shit.

Max told her story, dwarfed in the wooden witness stand as she spoke to the judge. She turned to him, as there was no one else at the makeshift morning meeting, to show the bruise. Tucked her red hair behind her ears as she spoke forcefully. She recounted the night as she had to Steve, including the bike, the backhand, and Billy’s shouts to get out. She added more details, cleared in the light of day. Of Neil's anger, his drinking, of her own terror. She explained the fight, from her perspective, more.

Steve could see the way Billy’s jaw tightened when she rubbed her eye, the way it then twitched when she spoke of where she went after she fled the Hargrove house. He watched Billy instead of her, caught on those bruises and the blunt fingernails that dug into the wood of the desk at the mention of Steve’s name.

He hadn’t ever been called perceptive, but when the film was playing before him and he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to, it surprised him how much he could notice. 

Before, back when everything had been normal and the world hadn’t gone to shit in the middle of the Hawkins woods and Steve hadn’t accidentally adopted a kid with a mop of curly hair, he wouldn’t have been there. He wouldn’t have witnessed Max and her stubbornly teary eyes, Billy and his bent, damaged posture. He would’ve heard about this on the news in passing, on the radio on his way to school maybe, and thought nothing of it. Maybe thought the worst, thought something more bigoted and cruel, along the lines of thinking whatever had been done to Billy had been deserved if it had turned out like this. But he wasn’t the same as he used to be, numb to the world and no longer giving a shit about anything that wasn’t going to kill the people he started to give a passive shit about. He was someone else, shoved in a corner next to Joyce as Max recanted one of the worst nights of her short life.

Not that Steve knew what he was doing, in the courtroom or in his general life. He just knew that somehow, when Maxine Mayfield had shown up bruised and battered on his doorstep that he had a responsibility to her, now, too. That by some babysitting code he’d been forced into, he was just as required to be there in that courtroom as he was to drive Dustin to the Snow Ball.

Steve Harrington thrived on the sharp taste of adrenaline, the fear of a fight, the thrill of a chase. He had none of those things, in the courtroom. All he had there was a sick sense of intrusion.

When Billy stood and swore to tell the truth, then actually did it, Steve felt sick. The bile crept up the back of his throat like a thick, slow slug, threatening to escape and spill onto the beige carpeting. His stomach churned, and his blunt nails dug into the audience pew. 

Steve wasn’t sure when he’d gone soft, or if he’d ever not been soft in the first place. He wasn’t sure when his life became courtrooms and occasional drives with Dustin, nightmares and parties he didn’t even really care about anymore but went to to get drunk and hook up with strange girls because he still couldn’t quite handle seeing Nancy with Jonathan when he dared show his face at the Byers’. He didn’t know how he’d started to give a shit about the things that mattered, but now that they did he couldn’t shake them from his head.

So he sat in a mostly empty courtroom behind a boy who had shot his father, and listened. 

“Your honor,” Billy started, voice low and scarily unlike anything Steve had ever heard out of those lips before. It wasn’t something that had showed itself on the basketball court or in the past fall or in the school halls, where Billy was boisterous and loud when Steve had ever paid enough attention to notice. It was downtrodden, subservient, and _practiced._

“What my step-sister, Maxine said was true. I feared for my life, and hers, sir. It was not the first time my old man had been,” he paused, a crack in the facade he’d plastered up showing itself before he steeled himself again, “Sorry, sir.” 

This side of Billy wasn’t something Steve had ever seen before, nor ever cared to notice, but he couldn’t help but think _it’s been practiced._ The whole thing was probably as much a part of that guy as the part that threw fists with wild anger, or the part that picked up small town girls with ease, or knocked Steve down on the basketball court. 

The judge held up his hand to stop Billy’s speech. “Your medical records have been pulled from California, son. I am ready to make my decision as long as you confirm what is in these notes. They go back to nineteen seventy-two. Three broken arms in four years. Bruises, the like. Can you confirm these, and what was recorded on your intake last night, were inflicted by Neil Hargrove, unprovoked?”

Steve still felt sick.

“I was five when he broke my arm the first time, _sir,_ ” Billy grit out, like he couldn’t force his tongue to do the only thing it could to save him from the fate of juvie or worse, county jail, “So, yes, it was unprovoked.”

Max’s face was beet-red, matching her hair as her fists curled in her lap where she was sat on the other side of Joyce. _I knew he- I_ knew _he_ yelled _at Billy but I didn’t know he._ Her words from the previous night echoed in Steve’s head, knocking around in the jumbled mess and reminding him that it was her first time hearing any of this, too. He wondered if the wheels were turning behind those red locks the way they were in his head, or more likely, harder. If she too was rethinking every outburst she’d witnessed, every ounce of anger held in Billy, every interaction she’d had with her step-father.

The girl who’d helped save the world from slow destruction looked ready to cause another apocalypse, on her own. She was _angry._ She was so much like her step-brother in that moment Steve wondered if they weren’t really related. Steve knew there was fire under that girl’s skin, and he wondered when if would burst out. Who she would burn in retaliation. Retribution.

_She could’ve done something._ Steve thought, because if the Upside Down had taught him anything, it was that anyone could always do something. _He_ could have done something. He could’ve said something, when he’d witnessed the bruises across Billy’s chest in the showers after practice. He could’ve done _something._ If he’d have known.

But would he really have? The idea haunted him more than any bruise he’d seen. Would he ever have cared what happened to the asshole that beat his ass, had he not shown the small drop of humanity he had when saving his sister? 

Steve didn’t think he would’ve. In the end. He still couldn’t stand the guy. 

Knowing that about himself, that he was as careless as when Barb disappeared, was worse. 

Before he was led out of that damp courtroom to await his trial under the care of Joyce Byers, Billy had turned to Steve, despite the latter being convinced he’d gone unnoticed. Sharp teeth poked from behind curled lips, the Billy Hargrove he was used to had snapped over those pointed features with cool ease. 

“Enjoy the freak show, _pretty boy?_ ” He snarled, biting it out like a wolf caught in a trap. Going for damage, and missing his mark, because Steve couldn’t find it in himself to feel anything but empty, really. 

Billy was taken out of the courtroom before Steve could retort. Led away like a lamb to the slaughter, despite it being the walk to his moment of freedom. Steve still couldn’t see a victim, when he watched Billy try to hide a limp as he left. The world was turning grey, and Steve still couldn’t wrap his head around a hulking bully being in the same category as Joyce Byers. Not that he would let her hear that.

The world was turning grey, and Billy Hargrove never scared Steve.

The world was turning grey, and now the whole thing made him _sad._

 

He had been bloody when Hopper got to the house, Steve found out later, he’d been coated to the biceps in his father’s blood and sobbing. Hopper had told Joyce, outside that courtroom in a hushed whisper, when Billy was arguing with Max off in some corner and Steve had been left with nothing else to do but listen in. Hopper had been going over everything he’d thought Joyce needed to know, and at the forefront was the fact that Billy had been covered in _blood_ because he’d been trying to stop the bleeding. 

There hadn’t been the crazed laughter, that horrifying enjoyment Steve had witnessed firsthand the fall before. There had been frantic tears and hands trying to take back what they’d done and apologies dripping from those harsh lips, and Steve didn’t know which one was more terrifying.

There was something about that, seeing someone who had been filed away into a perfect, one dimensional space in your head, rip their way out. Prove themselves as a real person, as something more than a messy teenaged villain. Billy hadn’t been at the forefront of Steve’s mind since his face no longer beat hot and heavy with bruises, since there’d been no practice to be knocked down in. He’d been filed away, out of sight out of mind, to stay in that box.

He realized, when he was busy overhearing how Billy could really be a real human being, that it wasn’t only Joyce and Hopper’s privacy he was intruding on. It was Billy’s too, and to an extent, Max’s. It was their story to tell, and his to leave alone, but he’d never been good at sticking to his own business if the past two years were anything to go by. And Billy Hargrove had beaten his face in, even if he’d mostly gotten over it by now, he could deal with a little intrusion. 

He didn’t really care anyway, when he thought about it.

Steve also learned of Max’s mother’s impending return to Hawkins the next morning and of Billy’s fist’s bloody clash with the bars of the station’s cell that morning. That he was _unstable_ and still _dangerous._

He really, really wasn’t sure why he wasn’t capable of staying out of trouble, but Steve was going to blame Dustin for it.

That night, after Billy had been carted away and Steve had skipped the rest of school to instead turn on the living room TV to the loudest setting and just _exist_ in his new, seemingly perpetual state of loneliness, Joyce called. To spare him from the emptiness of a big house, and to keep herself sane in one too small for the four bickering teenagers that currently occupied it with her.

To be fair, Steve didn’t think he felt _lonely._ He was just _alone._ A lot. And the nearly empty pack of cigarettes on the table next to the covered pool could attest to that. As could the booming background noise of the television, and the empty fridge, and the bottle of liquor he hid under his bed. But it was normal, he thought, to be different since the world had ended, even if he wished he could take it all back most of the time.

There hadn’t really been anyone since Nancy. He’d hooked up with a girl at a party whose name he couldn’t quite remember, because it was what _King Steve_ was supposed to do, but all it had left him with was a mild discomfort in the pit of his stomach and a strange little twinge in his chest that had never been there before Nancy. So instead he partied because he could use it to drink, because it got him out of the house, because it made him forget that his sad excuse for friends were a group of middle schoolers. 

He used to be _more._

Now he was just a loud television and a furious swirling of half-formed memories.

At least, he thought, he was fine and both his parents were still alive and didn’t beat him even if he hadn’t actually seen them in nearly two weeks.

But Joyce called, sweet and caring and fretting as she always was, and told him firmly that he’d be joining them for dinner. _Steve_ she’d said, _You are coming over and you are keeping my boys from killing each other and you are going to_ talk _to Max and keep them all sane. I’m not doing this alone. I can’t do this alone. Hopper’s still investigating. And I love those kids, but I can’t deal with Dungeons and Dragons tonight. Be here at six._

She didn’t mention the fact that last time Billy and Steve had been in that house they’d nearly killed each other. Steve didn’t mention the fact that she said _my boys_ and didn’t exclude Billy from that. Instead, he wondered what the world had done to deserve a mother like Joyce Byers, who fought tooth and nail for her boys and pulled another broken one under her wing despite her lack of means and his penchant for violence. Despite everything he’d done. Possibly for what he’d done.

That’s how he ended up in the Byers’ driveway, locked in his car away from the sharp spring wind, smoking another cigarette. Avoiding that house, the one he could see monsters of the night spilling out of every time he closed his eyes, for another sweet second. Avoiding his ex’s boyfriend, avoiding the boy who nearly killed him, avoiding the girl who thought of him as some sort of protection, avoiding a mother who thought he was cut out for any of this. 

Billy Hargrove didn’t look any better than he did that day in court. He looked _worse,_ if it was possible. His bruises were cast sickly green under dim lights and clashed violently with the dull yellow of the wallpaper. He was out of place, out of his element, _damaged._ And his teeth gnashed violently because of it.

He’d turned on Steve the minute he’d stepped through the door, barred teeth ready to attack. Ready to pounce, and Steve had steeled himself for the fight right back. For a long second, they were back in the fall and the words _You’ve got some fight in you after all,_ rang loud in Steve’s ears. 

“Billy!” Max’s shrill, angry voice cut through Steve’s haze of memories, “Leave him the hell alone.”

Steve wasn’t _afraid._ Not of a boy, a human, like Billy.

“Harrington can handle himself, Maxine,” Billy shot back, over his shoulder, before turning that fiery blue gaze back on Steve, “Can’t you, _Harrington?_ ”

Steve hadn’t noticed it in court, or maybe it hadn’t been there, but Billy’s voice was _rough._ Scratchy and raw as he spoke to anyone but Steve, sounding nearly painful. Not that Steve ever expected someone like Billy Hargrove to admit to any pain, ever. Steve wondered what it felt like, to get bruises so deep they injured your throat. He knew what it felt like to be so far gone you could only see from one eye, the blinding pain of a broken nose. But never, in all his days of fighting had anyone nearly killed him. Not like _that,_ at least.

Instead of responding to him, Steve yelled, “Max! Language!” Because he was a damn adult and it was a lot easier than witnessing the slow destruction of a blonde menace.

“Really Steve? Hell is _not_ a swear word,” Max said as she emerged from the kitchen carrying a covered dish with mitten hands. She looked so out of place, domestic and almost _girly,_ that it disturbed Steve to his core. “Keep looking at me like that, either of you, and this is going on your heads. Then you’ll have Joyce’s wrath, too.” She slammed the dish down on the table roughly and threw the mits off after, glaring at both teenagers as they watched with raised eyebrows. 

“Maxine! Have some damn manners. You’re a _guest._ ” Billy sounded _disgusted_ by that word, even though he plastered on a mother-pleasing smile the second Joyce stuck her head out of the kitchen.

“Billy, I told you already, you don’t have to feel like guests, here,” Joyce said, thin mouth pressed in a harsh line.

And Billy muttered, “Yeah, yeah, _me casa es su casa_ and all that bullshit,” and winced small enough for Steve to nearly miss when he touched his own neck, like he’d forgotten about the purple stains that resided there. 

Steve couldn’t help it, _really._ He _almost_ felt bad about poking the injured bear, too, but well. His nose still ached in the cold. “Dude, what’s with all the Spanish?”

“The fuck’s that mean, _all the Spanish_?”

Joyce plowed over him, like it was no big deal, this whole fucked up thing, and addressed Steve instead. Before Steve could address the heat that crept up his neck, threatening to spill out and let him say something stupid. “Steve, honey, thanks for coming. Give me a hand in the kitchen?”

Jonathan was in there, but made his hasty exit the second Steve stepped over the threshold. Joyce gave Will a _look_ and he went to find Max and keep the siblings somewhat distracted. With a practiced ease, Joyce slid some vegetables and a knife into Steve’s hands and before he’d even realized it, he was chopping away. 

“Thanks for coming, Steve,” Joyce started, like she hadn’t commanded it of him, “I know Max feels safer around you. And Billy and Jonathan… Well, let’s just say they aren’t going to be bonding anytime soon.”

She looked at him then, catching his eyes as his chopping slowed to a stop. She looked at him and he swore she could see into his soul. With those knowing, motherly eyes, she could see right through him and all his old _King Steve_ posturing. Through every act he put up to make everyone else feel _fine_ about what happened last fall. 

“I don’t like the idea of you in that big house all alone, honey. I want you to come over more. You were a big help last fall, and I’m not going to forget that,” the threat of a tear was in her voice, just at the vague memory of the near loss of one of her sons, “I owe you a lot. We all do. You kept those kids safe when you didn’t have to. So I want you to come over whenever you want. Whenever your parents aren’t home. Okay?”

And Steve wasn’t exactly sure what to do with that. But he never was, so he just said, “Okay,” and told himself that he probably wouldn’t. Because as nice as Joyce was, her house was filled with nightmares. And it held the terror that was Billy Hargrove, now, too. 

She turned back to the pot on the stove when she continued, like she knew it wouldn’t go over well. “And, I know there’s some history there. But I want you to just. Be open to at least being _acquaintances_ with Billy. I don’t think he has anyone, now, either. And like I said, he and Jonathan are very different. I think the two of you have more in common than either of you think.”

And Steve just said, “Okay,” again, and kept chopping the vegetables. What else was he supposed to say to that? 

Steve was pretty sure he’d never once existed in a moment as awkward as when he sat at Joyce Byers’ kitchen table, shoved between Billy and Max to keep them from killing each other. Despite the fact that if either one of them wanted to, they’d tear him to shreds with glee to get at the other. Like anyone really thought Steve was going to stop two siblings from having some sort of catfight in the same kitchen he’d valiantly lost to Billy in previously. Definitely more awkward that those god-awful dinners with Barb’s parents. 

“Food’s great, Ms. Byers,” he said, to break the dagger-like stares and because it wasn’t as bad as looking two mourning parents in the eyes and saying _finger-licking good._ Not much better. But better.

Joyce smiled, a real one, too, so it was worth it. Awkward as the whole thing may be. “Thanks, Steve,” she said, with a little elbow to Will that Steve had _no clue_ how to interpret, “ _Billy_ is actually a pretty good cook. Helped me out with the casserole.”

“Thanks, Joyce,” Billy said, that all too familiar mom-pleasing voice, combined with a sly smile that Steve knew all too well from charming his own way into the Wheeler’s, “I’ve never had a casserole before.”

“Wait, seriously man?” Steve asked, turning to look at Billy for the first time since he’d arrived. 

“Yeah, that’s some Midwestern bullshit, right there,” he responded, loud enough for the whole room to be able to hear but looking so intensely at Steve it seemed only for him. The same way he felt trapped and exposed in the courtroom earlier, he was stuck in that moment with Billy. Steve wasn’t sure _how_ exactly, Billy could make it seem like the whole world had stopped just by looking at someone, but he did. Made time go just a hair slower, all intense and burning and angry even when he wasn’t on the surface.

Steve could’ve sworn he saw those blue eyes flick down when he whispered the next part, hidden under Max’s tirade of Californian _whatever_ to Will and Joyce, “ _Pretty boy._ ” 

He didn’t _get_ Billy. Or Max. Or any of those kids. He didn’t get how someone could toe that line between taunting and flirting so easily, like nothing of the past twenty-four hours had happened. Or maybe because the past twenty-four hours had happened. 

Steve did know one thing, for sure. Billy Hargrove was trying to get a rise out of him. And pretty didn’t mean _pretty._

He didn’t get how Billy seemed to have ten pounds lifted off his shoulders from earlier that day, but at the same time, he did. It was like how he felt like he could breathe again, when the gate was confirmed to be closed for good.

Billy didn’t spend much time on Steve, who was there to be a distraction, really. Instead he focused on charming his way into Joyce’s bleeding heart, through complimenting her mediocre cooking and her youngest son. 

Steve wasn’t _disappointed_ to not have that attention. It was good. To not be under the scrutiny of some dumbass trying to one up him when he couldn’t care less anymore. But it was _weird._

Will hadn’t been there, when the fight had happened. He hadn’t seen the anger, the fear, the wild storm of a boy. He only saw the teenager who killed a man who looked too much like Lonnie Byers to protect himself and his kid sister. From what little Steve noticed of Will, it sure didn’t seem like the kid was looking away any time soon, either. Like that bruised guy, all sharp edges so easy for Steve to hate if only he had the energy to anymore, was the sun and Will couldn’t keep his eyes off.

He didn’t know what to make of that. But Steve never really knew what to make of anything, when he was in that house. So he didn’t bother trying. 

Once again, back at home, Steve fell asleep with blue eyes burnt into the back of his eyelids. But this time, they were accompanied by the ring of a handprint on Billy’s neck, the thought of a kid barely five with a cast on his arm ( _blue,_ Steve thought, _it would’ve been blue_ ) and a loop of Max pulling Billy’s arm over the back of Joyce’s couch behind her when she sat down, then refusing to look at him the rest of the night because she was mad he’d said something insulting about her friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this how courts work? Who fuckin knows man, not me. Gotta have a plot though so it's ok.
> 
> Also, I don't think Steve didn't care when Barb went missing, but I think he probably took what Nancy said to heart.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took forever, school and work were a lot over the past couple months.

The thing was, though, it turned out that Joyce’s initial assessment of Jonathan and Billy’s relationship had been almost completely wrong. Or at least, that’s what Steve thought when he opened that dreaded door to Billy and Jonathan’s loud argument later that week. 

Steve could hear the muffled voices from the front steps. He could taste cigarettes still stuck in the damp air, like they’d just been smoked and stomped out the second he’d arrived. Spring mingled in the air like a forgotten lover, kissing his perpetually red, frozen nose with a warm breeze. 

Billy was louder than Jonathan, as most people were.

Steve wanted a smoke. He wanted an escape. To climb back into his Beemer, to rebel for real, to forget about what he was expected to do. He wanted to feel something other than boring, empty, monotony. He wanted excitement that didn’t hold hands with death. He wanted to get out, to never think of Hawkins again.

Instead, he pushed through the front door.

“- _Bowie_ is good, sure, but we are _not_ listening to that sappy bullshit The Smiths whine about,” Billy said to Jonathan, loud and fired up, but free of the lust for a real fight that Steve had associated with the other teen. 

Billy was _smiling._ A smile that didn’t speak only to mock, to show sharp teeth, to dig into whatever he believed he was owed. One that actually reached up and made the corners of his eyes crinkle up. Like he was human again, damage undone by a storybook home in the woods. It wouldn’t last, of course, but it still disturbed Steve in a way he couldn’t put a name to.

Even worse, Jonathan was smiling back. Or at least, Steve thought whatever he was doing with his face was _supposed_ to be a smile. 

“ _The Smiths_ are not _whining_ they are _singing,_ you just don’t know what it sounds like when musicians don’t scream,” Jonathan protested, not nearly as animated as Billy. Sullen and reserved instead, like he always was, in that creepy way. He never seemed to be up to anything good. 

Not that Steve knew what anyone was up to, these days. He did his best to avoid Jonathan and Nancy, because every time he saw him touch her, his chest still went kind of tight and he wanted to break something. 

Max had pulled him into this, though, and Joyce wasn’t letting him back out. So Steve had accepted that he was going to see Jonathan and Billy now, even if he couldn’t stand either one of them. It was for Joyce. It was for Max, because for the first time in a long time, someone had chosen _him._

Billy was in his own clothes again, shirt unbuttoned nearly down to his navel like no one had ever taught him any better. Max and her mother had been allowed to live in the house again a day prior when it had been cleared as a crime scene and the bloodstained carpet had been ripped out and paraded to the landfill like a sick tribute. Susan had then allowed Billy to fetch a few of his things from his old room, though she had stood on the curb and cried the whole time he’d been in there. Or so the rumors had gone. 

Billy hadn’t been seen, really seen, in school or on the town or screaming through country roads in that blue Camaro, in days. The only time he surfaced from the Byers’ was to get those things and his miniature trial. According to Steve’s mother’s contacts with the outside world, Billy didn’t look any better when he tekked back to his house of horrors. Instead, like a zombie covered in bruises instead of rotting flesh, he left the house as dead as he had arrived, with boxes in his arms and fresh blood on his knuckles.

_How could a boy do that to his own father?_

Steve hadn’t paid much attention to his mother’s saccharine ramblings after that, but kissed her cheek as he was supposed to and managed to make it to the Byers’ without being able to recall a single second of the drive once it was over.

Steve had a casserole dish in his hands as he pushed through the front door, courtesy of his mother. She’d heard of his outings, of that monstrous boy who’d killed his own father, of Joyce Byers’ ridiculous commitment, of Steve’s supposed help. She’d heard it all from some other rich moms in the neighbourhood who spent their lives gossiping about the asinine life of Hawkins, because God knows Steve wasn’t about to tell her where he went. Ever. 

So she’d made up some bizarre casserole, something she must’ve seen on the convenient television shows teaching her how to be a _real_ upper-class woman. It was an amalgamation of canned goods, likely disgusting, but Steve had brought it anyway. Despite the overwhelming urge to dump it out the window of his Beemer on the highway. 

Sometimes, Steve thought maybe his mother would’ve been happier if she’d been born three decades earlier, when all of Nonna Valentina’s teachings would not really have gone to waste. Steve wasn’t the son that had been wanted, anymore. He’d strayed too far from the norm, the popular consensus of the high school. He still went to parties, now more frequent than when he’d dated Nancy, but Billy had replaced his spot at the top. Or at least he had, before all of this. Steve’s grades were slipping worse than before, since he had no one there to look over his worthless essays. Dustin did, sometimes when Steve could stand him and his bullshit for longer than a few hours without the end of the world looming over them, but they still weren’t good. With the sun coming out of hiding and the end of school approaching, Steve couldn’t find it in himself to care. His parents didn’t either, really, aside from a sit down at the end of the previous semester from his father. 

He didn’t doubt that his parents loved him. They told him often enough through his childhood, they provided for him, they hid their fights as best they could from his prying ears. They just weren’t around. They weren’t _Joyce,_ and her undying devotion to her sons. Her devotion to a stranger with a story too similar to her own for her not to pull under her motherly wing.

But they also weren’t Neil Hargrove, and Steve wasn’t sure who he was supposed to thank for that. 

The Byers’ house always felt like a home, and Steve still felt like he was intruding. It was tight with the friction of two turned three turned four teenage boys, three of which had all thrown hands like some sort of incestuous fight club. It was packed to the brim with Joyce’s love for her sons, her newfound affection for Billy, her fierce protection. Joyce Byers was a mother Steve had only heard of in storybooks, abandoned once he found out that you don’t actually have to read to get passing grades.

Joyce was in the kitchen, voice raised above the din around her and the teenage voices. “If you don’t settle on _something,_ anything, I am putting on Cyndi Lauper!”

Jonathan groaned back at her with an eye roll, “ _Mom,_ we don’t even own a Cyndi Lauper record.” He looked somehow less gaunt than he usually did, whether from Nance or from Billy’s presence, Steve didn’t care to find out. Jonathan still ground his bones together in bitter friction, even though he’d made a promise to himself that he was over Nancy. 

But Steve liked Joyce and her fretful nature, her pseudo-adoption of all the neighbourhood kids, of a boy with bruises for a necklace. Being around her made Steve feel like _maybe_ his existence was worth something after all. So he came to dinner when she requested him, and didn’t look too much at Jonathan or Billy. 

“Are you absolutely sure?” She asked, in that light, teasing voice Steve had only ever heard from a mother like her, “I will dig one out just to stop this _ridiculous_ argument, boys, and then _Steve_ and I can have a good time while you two bitch and moan about it.”

That got the attention of the other teenagers, forcing them to look over and notice Steve for the first time. Billy’s face was red with frustration, but his eyes were those of a cat who’d just caught his prey. Satisfied with the toy he got to bat around, to play fight with. 

“Hey Steve,” Jonathan said, taking the casserole from Steve before following Joyce back into the kitchen and continuing, “Mom, _you_ are the one that said she sounded like a _parrot._ ”

With awkward, empty hands, Steve caught sight of Billy. The necklace of bruises was accompanied by the one he wore everyday before the incident. The one that Hopper had had in an evidence bag somewhere until Joyce had made a real good case for its release. 

“So,” he started, with eyes forced away from the horrific greenish-purple of Billy’s throat, “Who the hell is The Clash?” 

“ _Pretty boy,_ ” Billy finally really looked over at him, the words curling evilly over shark’s teeth. “ _How_ did someone as sheltered as you become King?” His tongue poked out from behind those sharp teeth, reminding Steve of everything he hated about the other boy. Spitting danger and venom like a snake, chest puffed out like Steve hadn’t just walked in on a domestic spat that said more about Billy’s comfort than anything else. 

Steve rolled his eyes. He didn’t know how Billy could do it. How he could fall into their previous roles, benched with the end of basketball, like the whole world hadn’t been tipped upside down. “Just put on Bowie, man, everyone likes Bowie.”

“Mike doesn’t. He thinks Bowie is overrated,” Will piped up, entering the living room for the first time since Steve arrived. He was wearing hand-me-downs that Steve knew for a fact Jonathan had never owned. So, no one had ever accused Steve of being observant, but one thing that had been trained into him was clothes. His mother’s fault, really. Her and her incessant need to appear to be the best homemaker in Hawkins, when she wasn’t in some far off city with Steve’s father.

Will looked like a beach rat, like someone dragged him by the hair from sunny California. Nothing but that bowl cut and his wide doe eyes screamed Will Byers. The rest were all Billy, Steve was sure, because the shirt hung a little too big off Will’s skinny shoulders. That and no one in Hawkins wore things that screamed West Coast but Billy. Steve had no clue what to do with that information, however. Billy Hargrove, new King of Hawkins High and grade-A douche, giving hand-me-downs to Zombie Boy.

Steve wasn’t sure when things were going to go back to normal, the normal that was before he’d invited Nancy and Barb to the pool party, but he really wanted things to be normal again. He didn’t want to go to the Byers’ and see Billy acting like a real person, he didn’t want to have dinner with Jonathan, he wanted to go home and drink more than he should to sleep through the night.

“ _Mike_ is a whiny little bitch who wouldn’t know good music if it hit him over the head,” Billy laughed.

Steve laughed too, because there was never a point in time around Mike where he _wasn’t_ thinking exactly that. “Agreed.”

Steve didn’t really know what had transpired in the four days since he’d last been forced to have dinner with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend’s family and the guy that beat his face in last fall, but the dynamics had obviously shifted. Or, at least, recent adoptee Billy Hargrove was not the Billy Hargrove Steve had met in that same driveway when the world was ending. 

“ _Which_ one is Mike?” Billy asked under his breath when Will rolled his eyes and joined the rest of his family in the kitchen. 

“Are you fucking serious, man?” Steve hissed back. He should’ve been surprised, but he wasn’t. No one had ever insinuated Billy was a good guy, nor a good brother. Just because he had sacrificed for Max when it really mattered, didn’t mean he gave a shit about her at any other point. Steve didn’t really believe that, either.

Billy shrugged, wide shoulders full of mock innocence. “Hey, I have better shit to do than learn all my step-sister’s little friends’ names. I’ve got like, real friends, I don’t know if you know what that’s like.”

Steve rolled his eyes, blood itching beneath his skin solely from contact with Billy. Like he was allergic, like he would break out in hives if Billy were to reach out and touch him. “The annoying one whose face looks like a frog.”

Billy smiled like a cat with a prized mouse carcass between its teeth, “The _other_ Wheeler kid. _Not_ the one our Jonny-boy is screwing.” He said it all with a strong hand clapped onto Steve’s shoulder, pushing as far into the latter’s break up as allowed under the watchful eye of Joyce. Showing his manufactured upper hand. 

Steve wondered if he could be allergic just to someone’s personality. Billy was just trying to rile him up, to get under his skin like he always used to before basketball ended, and Steve couldn’t stand how easily he needle his way in.

But Bowie started his song, echoing smoothly out of the record player, and the warmth of an allergen faded from Steve’s skin. 

They set the table to the serenade of Bowie, only to be interrupted by a loud fist hitting the front door. 

 

“Mom didn’t want me to come,” Max said, winded as she crossed the threshold. Steve let out a breath he’d been unaware he was holding, relieved to not be the only outsider anymore. “Mom doesn’t want me to go anywhere.”

“How the fuck did you get here?” Billy asked at the same time that Joyce said, “Max! I’m glad you could make it.”

Max only addressed Billy, already tensed for a fight. Like she could sense it in the air, in his sharp frown. She probably could, if Steve thought about it. “I biked.”

“You don’t have a bike.”

“It was _your_ bike, asshole.” Max had gotten a lot bolder, a lot more like her brother, since she took him down in that living room in the fall. Steve wondered, not for the first time, if she realized how much like her step brother she was. Fierce and angry and sarcastic. The color looked a lot better on her than it did on him. Hers was defiance with a purpose, bold in the face of adversity. His was dangerous, damaged in a life Steve didn't actually want to ever think about, proven to volitile more than once. Where his was more unstable than C-4, hers was simply annoying.

“I’m driving you home. Now.” 

“No you aren’t.” 

“ _Yes,_ Maxine, I am. I do not need some shit kidnapping rumor on my record, too. Get in the car.”

“Mom will freak out more if you drive me home,” Max said, as stubborn as the man before her, before dropping her voice to barely a whisper, “She doesn’t want to see you ever again. She wants you in jail. She will _freak out_ if she sees your car.”

“I’ll drive you home,” Steve interrupted the clash of siblings, for the sole reason that they were getting obnoxious, and he wanted to get everything over with as soon as possible.

Joyce continued the interruption, “After dinner. You’re already here, you might as well eat. Right, Billy?” 

Max sat between Will and Jonathan, as far as possible from Billy as possible. Steve thought that maybe his allergy was catching. Billy’s arms were crossed over his chest, though they kept uncrossing and crossing again, like he couldn’t get comfortable in his anger. There were bruises he couldn’t see, Steve knew, and he wondered if they lay beneath his heavy forearms. 

For not the first time in his life, Steve had no clue what he was doing. He still hadn’t figured out what he was doing in that house again, no attachments to any member of the Byers’ nor their new addition. All he knew was that this awkwardness was better than the emptiness of his own home and his mother with her questions about a future he hadn’t always been sure even existed.

The yellow lights of the kitchen cast a haze over the diners. Billy’s eyes were too blue, too angry, too much. They caught on Steve’s more often than they should’ve, across the table. 

Halfway through dinner, as Will and Max talked about DnD and Joyce asked questions that a good mother should, Billy stood abruptly. With only a few gruff words to Joyce, he stormed out the back with his pack of cigarettes in his hand. 

Bowie said, _I will do me harm._

He said, _I’m not quite right at all, am I?_

Steve followed Billy out the back door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this didn't have a whole lot of plot or anything but this story is gonna be p slow burn I think as far as them getting together. More on Billy's situation in the next chapter.


End file.
